Author: Jay Serafino

The objective of each Where’s Waldo? book is simple enough: comb through the crowds of people to find Waldo, who’s always decked out in his trademark red and white striped sweater and glasses. But simplicity isn’t on creator Martin Handford’s agenda. The English artist has made a career out of crafting immense visual puzzles, complete with mammoth oceans of people, spiraling buildings, and mythical beasts that make spotting the elusive Waldo an exercise in patience and frustration, even for the most eagle-eyed fans. With the character celebrating his 30th anniversary in 2017, we’re taking a look at 14 facts about Where’s Waldo?

1. MARTIN HANDFORD’S FIRST NOTABLE WORK WAS A VAPORS ALBUM COVER.

Waldo’s creator didn’t start his career with an eye on children’s books. One of his most noteworthy pre-Waldo works was the art for the 1981 album Magnets by The Vapors, of “Turning Japanese” fame. Despite debuting more than half a decade before Waldo, the album cover looks like it would fit right in with one of his famous look-and-find books. The album cover depicts one of Handford’s trademark crowd scenes, pulled out far enough so the swarms of people all form the shape of a giant eye.

2. NO ONE CAN AGREE ON WHO CAME UP WITH THE IDEA OF WALDO.

When David Bennett, art director of Walker Books, was looking to produce a picture book similar to Philippe Dupasquier’s Busy Places series, he needed someone who could specialize in one thing: crowd scenes. While he knew Handford would be perfect for the job, someone at Walker didn’t think a book of crowds—no matter how well illustrated—would be enough. According to Walker’s character publisher, Donna Cassanova, someone at the company came up with a way to turn a crowd scene into something far more interactive for readers.

“The company was getting ready for Bologna Book Fair and, just a week or so before, someone—several laid claim to being the ‘someone’—said, ‘Wouldn’t it be good if you were looking for an individual within that crowd scene, rather than just looking at a crowd?'” Cassanova told The Independent. “Everybody thought there was something in that.” Bennett took the idea to Handford, who, in just 24 hours, created a two-page spread that the publisher displayed at the book fair. “Within 24 hours there was a huge crowd of people standing round looking for Wally,” as the character was called in the UK. (“In England,” Handford explained to The New York Times, “if someone says something silly or looks slightly foolish, he is called a Wally. He is a little goofy, but well-meaning.”)

Though no one can quite pin down who this “someone” was, the idea worked, and when the first book, Where’s Wally?, hit the UK in 1987, it began something of a phenomenon. The first four books sold more than 18 million copies worldwide in the first four years of the series’ existence, far outpacing other children’s books of the time (which would sell around 50,000 typically). Since then, the series has sold more than 55 million books, and is available in more than 35 countries and 30 languages.

3. HIS NAME WAS CHANGED TO WALDO FOR THE AMERICAN RELEASE.

When Wally made the jump to the U.S. publishing market, he got a new moniker. John G. Keller, vice president and publisher of children’s books for Little, Brown at the time, wasn’t a fan of the name Wally. He told The New York Times that the name “reminded me of Wallis Simpson,” who married King Edward VIII after he abdicated the throne of England for her. And so Wally became Waldo—and that’s far from the only name given to the bespectacled world traveler. To name just a few: In Germany, he’s known as Walter; in France, Charlie; in Vietnam, Van Lang; in Lithuania, Jonas; and in Italy, Ubaldo.

4. EACH PUZZLE TAKES WEEKS TO COMPLETE.

While you’re busy frantically searching for Waldo, you can’t always appreciate just how impressive the level of detail is on each page. Every scene takes Handford around eight weeks to finish. “I work in stages across the page, from left to right,” he told The New York Times in 1990. “I start out with a list of about 20 gags I want to put in a picture, but more come to me as I am working.”

But despite the care that goes into every inch of the page, the placement of Waldo himself isn’t exactly a science. “As I work my way through a picture, I add Wally when I come to what I feel is a good place to hide him,” Handford said in an interview with Scholastic. Handford has plenty of places to hide Waldo—each scene includes anywhere from 300 to 500 characters, all meticulously drawn by Handford to the same scale as they appear in the book.

5. HANDFORD’S FAVORITE WALDO SCENE IS A MASSIVE ODE TO MOVIE MUSICALS.

Though most artists loathe talking about their favorite works, Handford did reveal the Waldo scene he likes best: “A Tremendous Song and Dance,” which could be found in 1993’s Where’s Waldo in Hollywood? The staggering visual is packed with hundreds of characters, most decked out in glitzy costumes on a Hollywood movie soundstage that could have come straight out of an Esther Williams musical from the ‘40s.

That cinematic flair should come as no surprise: Handford said when he was a kid he was always inspired by “typical Hollywood swashbuckler epics with a very heavy concentration on lots of extras and exciting battle scenes.”

6. DUBLIN BROKE THE RECORD FOR “LARGEST GATHERING OF PEOPLE DRESSED AS WALLY/WALDO.”

In 2011, a crowd of 3872 people in Dublin, Ireland, broke the record for the largest gathering of people dressed as Waldo. The feat took place at the Street Performance World Championship in the city. A previous record was set on the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 2009. There, 1052 showed up dressed as Waldo.

7. HANDFORD LIKES TO BELIEVE WALDO HAS GOTTEN LESS NERDY OVER THE YEARS.

When Handford first designed Waldo, he told the Los Angeles Times, “I gave him that look, because … I just imagined that the reason why he was lost was because he was slightly idiotic and didn’t know where he was going.” However, that view has changed over the years, and Waldo’s creator now sees the character as someone who is more mature and worldly than his original intention.

“From the personality point of view, I see him as completely different now,” Handford said in that same interview. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s not idiotic. He is a cool guy. He knows where he’s going. He’s very open-minded. He’s kind. From a visual point of view, his face has actually changed to make him look less nerdy.”

Though the changes aren’t major, Waldo’s face shape, posture, and hair have all evolved over the years, helping him look less disheveled.

8. A ROGUE SUNBATHER GOT WALDO BANNED FROM LIBRARIES.

Well, if Captain Underpants can get banned, why not Waldo? The surprising transgression has to do with the inclusion of “adult images” in the book, most notably that of a topless sunbather in the “On the Beach” scene, according to the American Library Association. The image, found in the original Where’s Waldo? book, caused the title to be banned in numerous libraries and stores across the United States, most notably the retail chain BJ’s. Eventually the woman was redrawn and covered up when the book was released in later editions.

9. WALDO’S SUPPORTING CAST HAS GROWN TO INCLUDE FEMALE COMPANIONS, PETS, WIZARDS, AND AN ARCH-NEMESIS.

Superman has his Bizarro, Mario has Wario, and Bart Simpson has an evil opposite number in the form of the mysterious Lester, so why shouldn’t Waldo have his own crafty doppelganger? As the books have evolved, the Waldo brand has introduced several more characters to the universe, including the diabolical Odlaw, who is decked out in a yellow and black striped shirt and evil dude mustache. Other Waldo staples include Wenda and Wilma, a pair of twins who have both been romantically linked to Waldo; Wizard Whitebeard, who basically looks like Gandalf wielding a candy cane; and Woof, a dog dressed just like Waldo.

10. YOU CAN EVEN FIND WALDO ON GOOGLE EARTH.

If you’ve found Waldo in every book, Canadian artist Melanie Coles has a challenge for you. In 2008, she crafted a viral game called Where on Earth is Waldo? after painting a 55-foot rendition of the iconic character on a rooftop in Vancouver. She encouraged people to find it through Google Earth, and created PDF instructions for people in other parts of the world to create their own Waldo painting wherever they may live.

11. BETHESDA DEVELOPED THE WHERE’S WALDO? VIDEO GAME IN 1991.

Yes, that Bethesda. The same video game company behind blockbuster hits like Fallout 3, the Elder Scrolls series, and the recent Doom relaunch also developed a Where’s Waldo? game for the NES in the early ’90s. The result happened to be one of the system’s shoddier efforts, where the player was tasked with helping Waldo get to the moon. Seriously. The debut game received a follow-up just a year later on the Super Nintendo, and more Waldo games have continued to hit shelves through 2009 with entries on the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo Wii.

12. A COMPUTER SCIENCE GRADUATE CREATED AN OPTIMAL ALGORITHM FOR FINDING WALDO.

After close to 30 years, people are still having trouble finding Waldo (don’t even get us started on that “Land of Waldos” puzzle). To turn that frustration into smug satisfaction, a computer science graduate from Michigan State University named Randy Olson created an algorithm to find the optimal search path for the evasive Waldo. By mapping out the location of Waldo in every book, he graphed out the spot the character is most likely to be, as well as where he never appears, like the top left and bottom right corners. What he came up with looks a little something like this:

Optimal search path for finding Waldo, optimized w/ a GA. #dataviz #datascience

Source: http://t.co/LfUavPB4yC pic.twitter.com/itHuaf44Ir

— Randy Olson (@randal_olson) February 3, 2015

You can see even more graphs, GIFs, and information over on his blog.

13. HANDFORD MADE A FORTUNE BY SELLING THE WHERE’S WALDO? RIGHTS.

In 2007, Handford sold the rights to the Where’s Waldo? characters to a company called Entertainment Rights for £2.5 million. Handford still has the rights to illustrate and publish future Waldo books, but Entertainment Rights holds the rights to make money from other ventures, such as video games, TV series, movies, and other merchandise.

14. THERE’S GOING TO BE A WHERE’S WALDO? MOVIE (EVENTUALLY).

A Where’s Waldo? movie has been in development for years, but in 2016, serious steps were taken to bring the character to the big screen. It was reported that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were in talks with MGM to finally make the film a reality. While nothing concrete has been announced since then, Waldo’s enduring popularity should always keep studios interested in turning him into a movie star.

Few celebrities have become internet cult heroes the way Jeff Goldblum has. He’s come in the form of countless memes, YouTube mashups, and a very odd prayer candle over on Etsy. Now Goldblum’s brand of neurotic charm is being turned into its own activity book.

UK publisher Belly Kids is responsible for this dream product, aptly titled Do I Hate Being Right All the Time: The Jeff Goldblum Activity Book. Coming in at £7.00 (about $8.43), the book is 32 pages of stammering fun, complete with games, mazes, puzzles, and more, spanning the highlights of Goldblum’s career. There’s a page urging you to draw a Goldblum emoji, a look-and-find puzzle set in Jurassic Park (1993), and a cut-out of The Fly (1986).

Belly Kids isn’t shy about its love for the actor, as the book’s description reads, “First crush, only love, most charming man on screen. To say Jeff Goldblum is the one great thing in this world would be a mass under statement.” 

If Goldblum isn’t for you, Belly Kids has plenty more items to satisfy your obscure soul, like a Bill Murray coloring book (called Thrill Murray), a David Attenborough quote book, an illustrated collection of classic eating scenes from movie history, and a book collecting various illustrations of Milhouse from The Simpsons.

But let’s be honest, Jeff Goldblum is for everybody, and you can order Do I Hate Being Right All the Time: The Jeff Goldblum Activity Book here.

[h/t Nerdist]

You might think you’re tech-savvy enough to spot a fake email from a scammer pretending to be PayPal or eBay, but what about one coming from a familiar contact? And what if the message attached read just like something sent from a real person? That’s exactly what a new email phishing scam is doing to unassuming Gmail users, according to Boing Boing.

The attack, which was initially reported by Wordfence, comes in the form of an email from a user who has already been compromised by this scheme. The email will come from a familiar address in your contacts, complete with an attachment (an image or link) to click on. Some of these emails are even designed to look like replies to previous emails to your contacts, making it even harder to spot the scam right away.

Once you click on this attachment, you’ll be sent right back to your Gmail sign-in screen. This could all sound suspicious already, except for the fact that in the URL for the sign-in screen, you’ll see “accounts.google.com.” It won’t be the real Google sign-in screen (there is other extraneous URL text that confirms that) but if you’re in a rush, or just unfamiliar with what it should read, it’s easy to assume you just have to re-input your login info. And that’s where they get you.

After that login information is entered, the hackers will now have your information, and they are ready to do the whole thing over again to one of your contacts. Wordfence has an account of how this all works:



“The attackers log in to your account immediately once they get the credentials, and they use one of your actual attachments, along with one of your actual subject lines, and send it to people in your contact list.

For example, they went into one student’s account, pulled an attachment with an athletic team practice schedule, generated the screenshot, and then paired that with a subject line that was tangentially related, and emailed it to the other members of the athletic team.”

Twitter user Tom Scott posted a screenshot of what to look out for if you’re ever mysteriously propositioned to log back into your Google account for no apparent reason after clicking on an attachment:

This is disturbingly clever. You get sent to a text/html data URI! Not testing any further but, blimey, talk about using power for evil. pic.twitter.com/TamVn7DBfW

— Tom Scott (@tomscott) December 23, 2016

In the URL, you can see “data:text/html…..” at the front, which shouldn’t be there. And if you scroll (a lot) past the text in the address bar, eventually you’ll come across even more funky code. At that point, get out of dodge and change your login info for good measure.

[h/t Boing Boing]

Last year was both a successful and frustrating time for Nintendo. There was the runaway victory of Super Mario Run on mobile and the big launch of Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon on the 3DS, but there was also the NES Classic fiasco, which saw supply shortages worldwide rob people of the chance to even consider purchasing the company’s ode to their classic titles.

The company is looking to reward the faith of its fans with a brand new console in 2017: the Nintendo Switch. The company describes it as a “best of” of all their older systems in one new package, complete with an innovative design that can switch (get it?) between a home console and a handheld system in mere moments. Late last night, the company streamed a global event to detail what the Switch is capable of, and here’s what we learned.

1. THE LAUNCH DATE AND PRICE ARE CONFIRMED.

During the Nintendo Switch event, the company announced that the system will be released in Japan, the U.S., Canada, Hong Kong, and major European countries simultaneously on March 3, 2017 for $299.99. For reference, the Playstation 4 was $399.99 when it came out in November 2013, and the Xbox One retailed for $499.99 at launch. The Switch will debut with two versions: one with grey Joy-Con controllers and one with neon red and blue controllers. Both versions of the system will retail for the same price.

2. ONLINE SERVICE WILL BE A PAID SUBSCRIPTION IN FALL OF 2017.

For a brief trial period, the Nintendo Switch’s online services will be free, but once fall rolls around, it will become a paid subscription service like Xbox Live. Details on what the service includes haven’t been released yet, but if Microsoft’s model is anything to go by, it should include enough perks to make the subscription price not sting quite as much.

3. THERE ARE THREE DIFFERENT WAYS TO PLAY THE SWITCH.

The Nintendo Switch offers gamers the chance to utilize three different play styles. The first is the traditional console setup that connects to your television. The second involves disconnecting the Switch console from the dock, flipping the kickstand, and setting it up on a flat surface to play anywhere you want. This works because the console has a display screen that turns the whole thing into a portable TV of sorts. This setup works best when multiple players want to crowd around one screen.

The third mode of play, and perhaps the most impressive, is the handheld play-style. Here, you disconnect the console from the port like before, but now you slide the two small Joy-Con controllers on each side of the console, turning the whole thing into a handheld gaming device, similar to a super-powered DS. There’s no single-screen multiplayer this way, but you can connect with other Switch users in the area for certain titles. The battery life will vary by game, anywhere from two and a half to six and a half hours.

4. THE CONTROLLERS ARE MORE COMPLEX.

The entire Switch system revolves around the Joy-Con controllers, which look like two small joysticks you can hold in each hand—somewhat reminiscent of the Wii Remote. Some games will use both of these controllers at once, while others will use only one flipped horizontally, allowing you to give the other to a friend for multiplayer titles. There’s also the obligatory motion sensors and object detection built in, allowing your body to control the action on the screen like the Wii U. This was highlighted in a trailer for the motion-controlled title 1-2 Switch, which is filled with mini-games centering around these new Joy-Cons and the Switch’s portability:

Both Joy-Con sticks can also be joined together in what’s called a “Joy-Con Grip” to create a more familiar gaming controller when playing traditionally on a TV. If all of this switching isn’t for you, Nintendo will also sell an optional “Switch Pro” controller, which doesn’t have to be assembled together like Voltron; instead, it’s just a standard gaming controller that will likely work with a majority of titles.

5. MARIO TRAVELS TO THE REAL WORLD IN SUPER MARIO ODYSSEY. 

One of the biggest surprises of the Switch event was the announcement of Super Mario Odyssey for a holiday 2017 release. In this game, Mario leaves the Mushroom Kingdom to explore an array of new worlds, including New York City. But this isn’t a cartoonish version of Manhattan—this is the real deal, complete with populated streets, a barrage of billboards, and famous landmarks, like the Flatiron Building.

Seeing Mario’s portly physique clash with the skyscrapers and business attire of the working world might take some getting used to (so will Bowser’s all-white suit, honestly), but there will be other worlds to explore as well that fit more with the classic Mario aesthetic. Nintendo is touting Odyssey as being in the same vein as Super Mario 64‘s expansive (for its time) explorable world:

6. THERE WILL BE MORE THIRD-PARTY SUPPORT.

In addition to all of the new games that will be announced before the Switch’s launch, perhaps the most encouraging sign is the old favorites coming to the console. During the event, both Skyrim and FIFA were shown in some detail, while NBA 2K18 was briefly glimpsed during a video montage. These franchises may be old, but they signal a big win for Nintendo.

The limited power and niche design of the Wii U caused the company to lose out on support from third-party developers like EA and Bethesda. Now, with a more traditional control scheme to go along with the innovative Joy-Cons—plus the option to go handheld—it looks like some of the bigger names in the industry are returning to Nintendo.

7. THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD IS A LAUNCH TITLE. 

Kooky controllers, Mario in the Bronx, and some motion-controlled games are all well and good, but the biggest reveal was the fact that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is going to be a Switch launch title on March 3. Announced all the way back in 2013, the game has had an infamous development process, with delays causing it to miss out on a relevant Wii U release date. Fans can rest assured, though, that Zelda will be in their hands the moment they pick up their Switch. If you need more convincing, take a look at the new trailer:

Decades before The Simpsons predicted a President Trump, an obscure CBS Western from the 1950s called Trackdown featured a man who claimed he could prevent the end of the world by building a wall. The man’s name was Walter Trump, and he shares a number of similarities with the president-elect.

As pointed out by Snopes, in the episode “The End of the World,” which aired on May 8, 1958, the mysterious Trump was a confidence man, decked out in a cultish robe, who arrived in the town of Talpa and, “tells the townspeople that a cosmic explosion will rain fire on the town and that he is the only one that can save them from death.” The wall he wanted to build was designed to keep out certain doom, of course, but his mere presence arouses suspicion from some of the locals.

Trump’s plan never comes to fruition, and he’s eventually brought to justice by the show’s hero, Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman, for grand theft and fraud. YouTube user Marcy Brafman uploaded portions of the episode on November 4, 2016, just four days before the presidential election. You can check it out below to see the bizarre coincidence for yourself:

[h/t The Wrap]

For anyone looking to scratch that retro gaming itch, the NES Classic is the perfect solution. Well, almost. Nintendo may have included 30 classic games pre-installed on the system, like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Tecmo Bowl, but once you blow through those, there’s no way to get more titles. The NES Classic doesn’t connect to the internet or Nintendo’s eShop, so the current roster of games is all you’ll get until the inevitable follow-up that the company is sure to produce.

But what if you just need to play some Battletoads or Contra right now? As usual, there’s a hack for that. Ars Technica is reporting that hackers have found a way to add more titles to the existing NES Classic library, including favorites like Darkwing Duck, Bucky O’Hare, and the rest of the Mega Man collection (the NES Classic only includes Mega Man 2).

There’s a Reddit thread with a set of directions detailing how the hacker, named MadMonkey, accomplished this. The process involves hooking your NES Classic to a computer through the micro-USB cable, then uploading NES ROMs from the computer to the NES Classic.

A hack like this, in theory, can add any NES game you can find to your Classic—although a video found by The Verge claims that some people have run into trouble after uploading more than 80 games. Just know that all of these hacks involve a fair amount of computer savvy, as a wrong move can easily ruin your Classic device. Plus, there’s also no legal way to do any of this, since downloading a ROM is considered pirating.

If you don’t want to turn your NES Classic into an expensive paperweight, you can always legally download older titles from Nintendo’s paid Virtual Console service, provided you have a Wii U or Nintendo 3DS.

[h/t Ars Technica]

Stranger Things seemed to come out of nowhere to become one of television’s standout new series in 2016. Netflix’s sometimes scary, sometimes funny, and always exciting homage to ’80s pop culture was a binge-worthy phenomenon when it debuted in July 2016. Of course, the streaming giant wasn’t going to wait long to bring more Stranger Things to audiences, and a second season was announced a little over a month after its debut. Here are five key things we know about the show’s sophomore season.

1. WE’LL BE GETTING EVEN MORE EPISODES.

The first season of Stranger Things consisted of eight hour-long episodes, which proved to be a solid length for the story Matt and Ross Duffer wanted to tell. While season two won’t increase in length dramatically, we will be getting at least one extra hour when the show returns in 2017 with nine episodes. Not much is known about any of these episodes, but we do know the titles:

“Madmax”
“The Boy Who Came Back To Life”
“The Pumpkin Patch”
“The Palace”
“The Storm”
“The Pollywog”
“The Secret Cabin”
“The Brain”
“The Lost Brother”

There’s a lot of speculation about what each title means and, as usual with Stranger Things, there’s probably a reason for each one.

2. THE KIDS ARE RETURNING (INCLUDING ELEVEN).

Stranger Things fans should gear up for plenty of new developments in season two, but that doesn’t mean your favorite characters aren’t returning. A November 4 photo sent out by the show’s Twitter account revealed most of the kids from the first season will be back in 2017, including the enigmatic Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown (the #elevenisback hashtag used by series regular Finn Wolfhard should really drive the point home):

sƃuıɥʇɹǝƃuɐɹʇs#
ɹɐǝʎ ʇxǝu noʎ ǝǝs
uoıʇɔnpoɹd uı ʞɔɐq pic.twitter.com/jYd1tDsPRi

— Stranger Things (@Stranger_Things) November 4, 2016

3. THE SHOW’S 1984 SETTING WILL LEAD TO A DARKER TONE.

A year will have passed between the first and second seasons of the show, allowing the Duffer brothers to catch up with a familiar cast of characters that has matured since we last saw them. With the story taking place in 1984, the brothers are looking at the pop culture zeitgeist at the time for inspiration—most notably the darker tone of blockbusters like Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

“I actually really love Temple of Doom, I love that it gets a little darker and weirder from Raiders, I like that it feels very different than Raiders did,” Matt Duffer told IGN. “Even though it was probably slammed at the time—obviously now people look back on it fondly, but it messed up a lot of kids, and I love that about that film—that it really traumatized some children. Not saying that we want to traumatize children, just that we want to get a little darker and weirder.”

4. IT’S NOT SO MUCH A CONTINUATION AS IT IS A SEQUEL.

When you watch something like The Americans season two, it’s almost impossible to catch on unless you’ve seen the previous episodes. Stranger Things season two will differ from the modern TV approach by being more of a sequel than a continuation of the first year. That means a more self-contained plot that doesn’t leave viewers hanging at the end of nine episodes.

“There are lingering questions, but the idea with Season 2 is there’s a new tension and the goal is can the characters resolve that tension by the end,” Ross Duffer told IGN. “So it’s going to be its own sort of complete little movie, very much in the way that Season 1 is.”

Don’t worry about the two seasons of Stranger Things being too similar or too different from the original, though, because when speaking with Entertainment Weekly about the influences on the show, Matt Duffer said, “I guess a lot of this is James Cameron. But he’s brilliant. And I think one of the reasons his sequels are as successful as they are is he makes them feel very different without losing what we loved about the original. So I think we kinda looked to him and what he does and tried to capture a little bit of the magic of his work.”

5. THE PREMIERE WILL TRAVEL OUTSIDE OF HAWKINS.

Everything about the new Stranger Things episodes will be kept secret until they finally debut later this year, but we do know one thing about the premiere: It won’t take place entirely in the familiar town of Hawkins, Indiana. “We will venture a little bit outside of Hawkins,” Matt Duffer told Entertainment Weekly. “I will say the opening scene [of the premiere] does not take place in Hawkins.”

So, should we take “a little bit outside” as literally as it sounds? You certainly can, but in that same interview, the brothers also said they’re both eager to explore the Upside Down, the alternate dimension from the first season. Whether the season kicks off just a few miles away, or a few worlds away, you’ll get your answer when Stranger Things‘s second season debuts later this year.

The Amazon Echo’s voice-operated personal assistant, Alexa, is capable of quite a bit, including playing music, setting up your schedule, and even doing math for you. Now the company has unveiled a new Alexa feature that people have been waiting for: food delivery.

According to The Verge, Alexa can now order food for you just by following your vocal commands. The food comes directly from Amazon Restaurants (Amazon’s food delivery service), so it will only be available in 20 select cities, including New York, Seattle, Chicago, and Miami. But before you dream about a world where pizzas come to your front door at the sound of your voice, you should know that Alexa’s new voice-ordering service is limited. Very limited, actually.

Not only is the service limited to Amazon Restaurants in the cities where it’s offered, but there are two other big exceptions: First, you have to be an Amazon Prime member to use the service. Secondly, you can’t order any new meals on the service; you can only reorder meals you have already gotten from Amazon Restaurants in the past. Amazon gave a rundown of how this all works:

Prime members can ask Alexa to reorder from Amazon Restaurants by saying a restaurant name or cuisine type, for example, “Alexa, order sushi from Amazon Restaurants.” The service pulls a customer’s order history from a specified restaurant or cuisine type and lists meal options available for reorder. The selected meal is then sent for delivery to a customer’s default address.

The voice ordering system obviously still has to be improved, but as people start integrating Alexa into their lives more and more, expect this food service to rapidly expand.

[h/t The Verge]

As more and more kids grow up with technology so readily available (and addictive), the risk of obesity is an ongoing concern. With eyes locked on screens most of the day, it’s easy for a child to spend too much time on a couch and not enough time exercising. That’s why the Fisher-Price Think & Learn Smart Cycle is not only a seemingly perfect solution—it’s also a sign of the times.

The Think & Learn Smart Cycle is basically an exercise bike designed to hold a tablet or smartphone in place while a child pedals and pedals, controlling educational apps as they burn calories. So far, Fisher-Price has at least four apps prepped for the fall 2017 launch of the product, focusing on literacy, STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math), and social studies, according to Digital Trends. All of the apps are played depending on the speed of the child’s pedaling, so there is a “game” element to each one. More apps will be released for the bike in 2018.

The app’s dashboard allows parents to monitor their child’s progress; the apps will also work on televisions through Bluetooth connectivity. The Think & Learn Smart Cycle will retail for $150, and the apps will sell for $5 when the product launches in the fall.

[h/t Digital Trends]

LEGO never puts a limit on imagination, and at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the buildable block giant announced a new innovation that will put kids more in charge of their toys than ever: the LEGO BOOST. Aimed at children ages 7 and up, the BOOST is designed to teach kids (and anyone else who wants to learn) about the basics of coding and programming through the use of a building kit and a free app.

After downloading the app and syncing it to their BOOST building kit, users can add movement and sound (like voice recordings) to their latest LEGO creation, allowing them the creativity to customize their toys. The BOOST is powered by a Move Hub, which the company describes as “a LEGO stud-covered brick with built-in tilt sensor upon which children can add LEGO elements, motors, and a sensor that combines color and distance detection.” In the video below, you can see some of the movements a BOOST creation is capable of:

Each BOOST set includes directions to create five standard models: Vernie the Robot, Frankie the Cat, the Guitar 4000, the Multi-Tool Rover 4 (M.T.R.4), and the Autobuilder. But you won’t be shackled to just those creations; the BOOST app also has what LEGO calls a “creative canvas” that includes instructions for three creation bases: “a walking base for making animals like a dragon or a pony; a driving base for building vehicles like a dune buggy or rover; and an entrance base so that children can make their own castle, fort, or even a futuristic space station.” This allows you to cobble together preexisting LEGO kits to try your hand at something more original, such as a DIY Star Trek ship or a Batman BOOST creation.

“We know that children dream of bringing their LEGO creations to life, and our chief ambition for LEGO BOOST is to fulfill that wish,” Simon Kent, design lead for the LEGO Group, said. “Once children build a LEGO creation, we give them simple coding tools to ‘boost’ their models by adding personality. We want children to first and foremost have a fun and limitless play experience, adding the coding opportunity is the means to get there.”

Each LEGO BOOST kit comes with the Move Hub, a color and distance sensor, and an interactive motor, as well as 843 LEGO pieces for building and a playmat that works with the app. The BOOST will retail for $159.99 when it is released in the second half of 2017.

[h/t LEGO]